(2 of 5)
Deep-sea miners are hauling up tin off the shores of Indonesia and Thailand, diamonds off South Africa and sulfur from the Gulf of Mexico. Mining combines also hope to take the plunge into hot (up to 140° F.), muddy waters at the bottom of the Red Sea, believed to contain some $3.4 billion worth of copper, lead, zinc, silver and gold. But the hottest new item in undersea mining is manganese nodules—strange, dark chunks resembling badly charred potatoes that literally litter the ocean floor. The nodules contain significant amounts of manganese, essential for making steel, as well as other valuable metals, including copper, nickel and cobalt. One theory of their origin: dissolved in rain water, these minerals are carried off the continents by streams and rivers until they reach the seas. Eventually the particles settle to the bottom, where they tend to collect on such solid objects as rocks, sharks' teeth and even old naval shell casings. The floor of the Pacific alone is estimated to be carpeted with about 1.5 trillion tons of nodules (today worth up to $200 a ton). One particularly rich belt runs east-west just south of Hawaii. Unlike oil and gas, the nodules form quite rapidly—at a rate estimated at 6 million to 10 million tons a year in the Pacific belt alone. John Mero, a deep-sea mining consultant in La Jolla, Calif., predicts that some nodule-mining operations will be in full-scale production by 1980 and that it will eventually be possible to begin shutting down some of the existing nickel and copper mines on land. "There is enough down there to keep us all stuffed for 200 or 300 years."
About 100 companies and half a dozen governments are now actively working on nodule-mining technology. Billionaire Howard Hughes seems to be ahead of the pack. With characteristic Hughes secrecy, his Summa Corp. is testing a specially built, 36,000-ton, $100 million deep-ocean mining ship, Glomar Explorer, off Hawaii. The ship stations itself over a potential site, then lowers its TV-equipped mining apparatus, along with connecting pipe, through a large well in the hull. Once the mining gear hits bottom some two or three miles down, it slurps up nodules from the ocean floor like a huge vacuum cleaner.
Neither Hughes nor his competitors are talking about the scale of their investment. But experts reckon that a venture like his would require a commitment of about $250 million in a ship, a barge and a processing plant just to get started. A Hughes-type hydraulic mining operation using one ship could expect to process metals (mainly copper and nickel) worth $67 million annually.
The profit could come to about $27 million a year, for a reasonably attractive return on investment of 21%—competitive with conventional mines. Evidently Hughes has no intention of actually becoming a miner: Summa plans to sell its nodule technology, once it is perfected, rather than use it.
OIL: BLACK GOLD ROUND THE GLOBE
Oil and gas turn up where organic sediment has been left to pile up on the sea bottom for many millions of years.